The Ashes - 2nd Test Preview
The Ashes moves to Brisbane on Thursday for a pink ball Test, and somehow the entire narrative has centred on a man swinging a golf club. Usman Khawaja hit one gentle warm up shot, grabbed at his back, and suddenly half the country had him booked in for emergency spinal reconstruction. It turned out to be back spasms. Painful, annoying, the athletic equivalent of a flat phone battery. You would not have known it from the panic. The man was being filmed like he was dating a Kardashian.
And that was before he torched the Perth pitch in a way no Australian has done publicly in years. At a charity lunch, when asked about the first Test wicket, Khawaja did not bother with diplomacy. He called it a piece of s***. He said the bounce was up and down. He described it as dangerous. He questioned how the ICC had rated it Very Good and wondered what game they were watching. Cricket Australia were reportedly furious. England fans were delighted. The rest of Australia quietly nodded because he was not wrong.
Which brings us to England. A team that played cricket like they were trying to win an award for Most Misunderstood Artists. They collapsed twice inside two days yet somehow left Perth convinced they had won a moral victory. Journalists called them arrogant. Fans called them reckless. Ben Stokes called them neither. In his view, you can call England rubbish if you want but not arrogant. That one, he said, did not sit right with him. And fair enough. Arrogance implies intent. England’s batting looked more like denial wearing sunglasses.
Stokes stuck to the script. England will keep playing their way. They did some amazing things in Perth. They will back their method. It is the same message after every loss, only this time it came after two days of cricket so chaotic it felt like performance art. But this is their hill. They are not climbing off it now.
And now they walk into Brisbane. Not just Brisbane but a Gabba pink ball Test. The cricketing equivalent of being shoved into a dark room and asked to identify objects with your shins. Stokes said the night sessions will push players physically, which is code for this is going to hurt. England struggled to read length in daylight on a wicket Khawaja believes was actively dangerous. Under lights, against a pink ball that swings like it has been coached by Mitchell Johnson, it could get uncomfortable quickly.
Australia are not strolling in either. The top order is still jittery. Khawaja’s back spasms are manageable but unpredictable. The bowling unit carried the series for a decade and is now being asked to carry it again. And Travis Head, the man who saved them in Perth, probably will not be allowed to bat like a man possessed every week. England will try to convince themselves he cannot hurt them twice. Australia will try to convince him otherwise.
The real tension is philosophical. England are doubling down on a method they insist works even when the evidence is screaming at them like a fire alarm. Australia, meanwhile, are dealing with their opener calling a Test pitch a piece of s***, their medical staff monitoring him like a rare museum artefact, and the Gabba preparing its usual welcome package of bounce, hostility and late night swing.
This Test will not be polite. It will not be symmetrical. It will not follow a script. It will be the moment where either England’s defiance looks brave or their stubbornness finally tips into something closer to self harm. And it will be where Australia decide whether Perth was a miracle or a warning.
Either way, Brisbane will tell the truth. The pink ball always does.
